Age of Cosmic Exploration

Chapter 438: Superlight Speed Signal

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

"We did it! We only needed three seconds to send the signal to the receiver 15 light seconds away. This is a great improvement!"

In a space quite far away from the New Solar System stood three giant spaceships the size of the Hope. Protecting them were 10 guardian spaceships and 200 small battleships. This could be considered a fleet according to the Defense Unit's standards. In fact, the normal patrol fleet was only this size. Therefore, it was rare for a fleet like this to just idle in the middle of nowhere.

However, those who knew about the fleet's passengers understood what they were doing implicitly.

This fleet carried three great scientists in it. They were respectively the British astrophysicist, Alan; German physicist, Silewei; and American energy expert, Stewie. Each one of them was a treasure of humanity. After all, the human race only had around 10 great scientists, this number was less than one-tenth of Homo Evolutis. The fact that three of them were gathered at the same spot meant that something historical was going to happen.

That was indeed the truth because the result of this experiment would affect humanity's projected development for hundreds or thousands of years. This was truly a historical moment because if this experiment was successful, it would mean that humanity's transference of information speed could surpass light speed!

Light speed had a very unique representation in space because it was the threshold to determine whether a space civilization could survive in space. The cosmos was too large, so large that it would make any non-immortal lifeform feel great despair. For example, the distance between one solar system and the next was between 10 light years to several thousand light years, while the distance between one galaxy and the next would be calculated in tens of thousands or millions of light years.

If a space civilization wanted to survive in the cosmos, the first thing they needed to do was overcome the limitation of light speed, or else travelling from one solar system to the next would take thousands of years. Within these thousands of years, the exhaustion on the supplies storage would be tremendous. Furthermore, if you had too few people in your spaceship, that would lead to a weakened gene pool and thus deterioration of soul, but if you brought too many people, it would lead to drought and starvation. Many level 1 space civilizations were lost in space due to this challenge.

Under this situation, the appearance of the warp drive changed everything. This was the first navigation technique in space that could surpass the limitation of light speed. It was because of this that travelling between solar systems was possible and a space civilization could grow and advance. According to the technological level of the space civilization, the speed of warp drive could be several times to several hundred times faster than light speed.

However, this was merely navigational speed. While travelling speed could break through the barrier of light speed using warp drive, what about signal and information? Be it light waves, electronic waves, or subatoms, they were all still limited by the barrier of light speed. At least in current human technology, there was no information transfer technique that could surpass light speed. This meant that the fleet might have already reached the destination, but the information sent earlier hadn't reached the destination. This was a crazy event!

To put it simply, if the New Solar System was suddenly under siege by a large amount of level three space civilizations, then this meant that the enemy would already be at humanity's doorstep when they received any information about the assault, this was unacceptable. This meant that humanity could never receive any warning about approaching space civilizations in advance.

In fact, many level 3 space civilizations were caught in this conundrum. Becoming a level 3 space civilization represented a general safety of the space civilization since the number of high tier and middle tier space civilizations was too small.

Therefore, most level 3 space civilizations were considered the powerful forces among normal space, and the normal course of action for these powerful space civilizations was to build a Shelter, and Shelters were often targets for other space civilizations. If every assault on a Shelter was a silent assault, no one would be able to stand it for long, because this meant that even though demolished a Shelter, you could be destroyed by another civilization immediately after.

Therefore, those space civilizations at the edge of level 3 and level 4 would start to research on how to break through the barrier of light speed for information transference, especially superlight speed surveillance, to scan the enemy travelling in warp drive.

This kind of civilization had started to edge towards level 4. In other words, they had started the research on time and space. In their minds, since solid materials could surpass light speed using warp drive, then could information be transferred using the same method? Then the further extrapolation would be, could certain surveillance techniques utilize this method to scan threats that are many light years away?

In fact, theoretically speaking, this kind of superlight speed surveillance and communication was not impossible. In fact, most level 3 space civilizations would have touched upon it in their middle stage. As they ushered in the new breakthrough in energy research, they would improve upon warp drive. For space civilizations in the initial stages of level 3, their warp drive speed would be have reached 50 times light speed.

When they became middle stage level 3 space civilization, with research on the atomization of energy and nano-control technology, they would manifest in the improvement in warp drive and super energy ray communication during warp drive. In this situation, people could communicate with each other during warp drive and even survey the surroundings outside of the warp drive dimension.

As one continued to perfect this technology, and when one could initiate warp drive on pure energy, then this meant that the energy ray could surpass the barrier of light speed to transport information. In terms of surveillance, with nano-control and atomization of energy, they could reach out to "grab" basic particles several light years away using warp drive, and this was the basis of superlight speed surveillance. In reality, the information itself was still several ten, or even hundred light years away, but by using this technique, they could copy and fetch the information.

This technique was something that was not available to humanity; however, humanity did receive it from the space merchanst alongside the warp drive technology. At the time, humanity's technological level was still too far from understanding them, so they were sealed up and kept.

Until these two years when humanity had become an initial stage level 3 space civilization, this rare information humanity had obtained from the space merchants or the cursed planet proved invaluable to inspire the Academy. Since the most crucial point for humanity at the time was the defense, and if the defense lines didn't fall, humanity's new home would be safe. Due to this, the research on superlight speed communication and scanning was pushed forward. Thus far, there were about nine great scientists who had joined this task force, and Bo Li was also in it to provide inspiration and answers in her capacity as a Whisperer.

Even so, humanity still spent two years before they reached the first breakthrough and could conduct super light speed surveillance within five light years, detect the presence of warp drive within five light years, and increase the transfer of information to over five times light speed.

However, this was truly the most basic of breakthroughs. This was the current maximum speed achievable by humanity. Each increase of 0.1 over light speed would exhaust the energy needed by 10 times. 10 times the current amount of energy! With such a rate of energy exhaustion, only the alloy created by the alien plant could support it. The metals created by humanity themselves could no longer support such intense energy flow. In fact, if the information went beyond the five light years limitation, even the AI wouldn't be able to process the information quick enough…

In conclusion, even though humanity had managed to secure this technology that was only available to the middle stage level 3 space civilizations thanks to the help of the Whisperers, humanity had no basic technology to support it. This was the manifestation of a low technological prowess, similar to how even though level 2 space civilizations could use warp drive, the speed it could achieve compared to an actual level 3 space civilization was… laughable.

Regardless, this breakthrough still brought about a momentous change to the New Solar System's defense system. Humanity was no longer fighting in the dark…

Just like that, this fleet brought the three great scientists back to the City of Light Moon to deliver the good news. Three months later, the Defense Unit at the first and second defense lines started building the superlight speed surveillance devices, and when they used them for the first time, the entire human civilization was stumped into silence…

In a space less than 4 light years away from the New Solar System, a fleet was travelling in warp drive at 20 times the speed of light, and its destination was…

the New Solar System!